


even the anti-christ was human once

by phantisma



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-14
Updated: 2008-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-29 00:53:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/680824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantisma/pseuds/phantisma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are lines we cross, and lines we don't.  What makes us human or good or evil?  Dean's gone to hell for sacrificing himself.  Sam finds another way in.  The question is, can either one of them ever really get out again?</p>
            </blockquote>





	even the anti-christ was human once

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [every angel is terrifying](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/17284) by WANTTOBEATREE. 



> It was a small town and they were there to help Bobby take down a monster with a taste for teenage boys.
> 
> Sam wanted to see some stupid kid movie, but Dean dragged him to the new Batman movie instead. He figured it was a good compromise. And it would get them home before Dad. Except that walking back to the motel from the small two screen movie theater, something knocked them over and dragged Dean off into the alley between the drug store and library.
> 
> Two blocks from one place to the other and they can't make it without tripping over their father's hunt.
> 
> When it's over, Dean has a new scar on his shoulder and Dad's pissed. Bobby's cussing at Sam about him being old enough to know better and at Dean for giving in to everything Sam wants. That is the first time Sam runs away.

 

 

_He feels old, worn out and stretched like a pair of faded jeans that haven't fit in years. The scars live under his skin, where no one can see them, but he feels them just the same. The book lies heavy in his hands, heavy and useless, filled with old stories. Some of them true, some of them everyone thinks are true._

_Like the whole thing about angels falling and demons in the herd of swine. There was a time he might have found it funny. Now it only makes him sad._

_He sets it down on the pew, his hands smoothing over the cover. It can't protect him. Nothing can._

_It's eleven years since he got out. Since Sam opened a door and walked into hell and rescued him._

_Only it was a lot less than rescue, and a lot more like being ripped from one hell and dropped into another._

_Not that Dean noticed right away, he was too busy trying to remember how to breathe and walk. How to make the words come out of his mouth in a way that others could understand._

_He didn't even realize there was no one there to hear him. No one but Sam._

_Even now that's true. Even here._

_The others are all gone. Lost, dead._

 

 

 

The sun felt cool against his skin, its power to burn him lost after a lifetime of fire that never ended. His skin was bare to it, letting the wind and sun caress over flesh that still remembered the horrors of wounds that bled for hours and left no mark behind to show.

"You should be careful." Sam murmured beside him. His hand touched Dean's chest, flat against his heart, listening to the steady sound of it beating.

Dean breathed in deep, the scent of earth and the car beneath him and Sam all filling his lungs. He coughed then, his lungs not yet accustomed to air not gone fetid and puerile. Sam helped him sit up, held him until it passed.

"Quiet." Dean observed, not necessarily wanting noise, just wondering. He'd asked what they would do now that Sam had brought him out of hell and Sam had said he would show him, but so far this was all of it. This quiet place with no one around and only Sam and the sun and memories.

Words were hard, only days had passed since that first step out of that place. Sam didn't seem to need them, he understood, filled in the gaps. Sam's hand moved over his skin, hotter than the touch of sun, gentle in its pass, familiar.

Over his right shoulder, down his side, endlessly wiping away the blood that was no longer there, the blood that covered him once. Dean could still feel it. Sam could still smell it. Always there, even after showers and under clothes. Sticky reminder of his mortality, of his sin.

Dean wanted to ask why…but he wasn’t sure which question should come first. Or how to ask them. He only knew he was out and Sam had come for him. He touched Sam's face, just to be sure. "Real." Dean said, and Sam nodded.

"Real, Dean."

He nodded and let it go. For the moment it was all he needed.

 

 

 

_"Sam!"_

_He screams it endlessly into the dark until his voice fades into whispers and beyond._

_One word._

_One name._

_He holds on to it, cradles it to him as he curls in on himself, hiding it from the torment as his skin is stretched and pulled, ripped and torn, left to bleed and fester._

_"Sam!"_

_He forgets sometimes what it means, but he doesn't let go of it._

_She told him not to._

_Told him to hold on to something. Hold on and never let go._

_He can't remember who she is, but he remembers "hold on"._

 

 

 

Sam never asked him what it was like, Dean realized one day as they sat side by side in the Impala. They weren't going anywhere, just sitting on the side of some road in the middle of nothing and nowhere.

Dean noticed Sam's hands trembled sometimes and his nightmares were worse than before. He noticed that Sam never answered his phone and steered them clear of places and people they used to know.

Dean hadn't asked Sam yet either. Maybe he didn't want to know. For the time being this was fine. Sam beside him, the way it used to be.

Only, maybe not quite the same. These days Sam sat in the driver's seat. These days the radio stayed off. These days Sam didn't talk anymore than Dean did.

All that ended on a strip of blacktop in South Dakota when Dean remembered something.

"Bobby." He said it like he wasn't sure. He wasn't, actually. He was half sure it was a dream, a torment. They had told him everyone was dead, everyone gone to hell, just like him. Sam, Ellen, Bobby…Dean shook his head. Looked at Sam.

Sam nodded at him, then looked away, his head still moving as if he wasn't sure how to stop it. "Yeah. Okay."

The tires squealed and the scenery got blurry out the window before they were turning down a dirt lane, past barbed wire and junked out cars. Sam stopped them well before they actually reached the house, shifted uncomfortably on the seat.

"Not sure I'll be welcome." Sam said finally, not looking at Dean. "Might be best if you go alone."

Dean didn't understand that. Sam was always welcome. It was Bobby. But he got out of the car and shuffled up the long dirt track by himself, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket.

Bobby was out working on some car, bent under the hood. The old dog laying in the dirt next to him lifted his head, sniffing the air. He didn't bark, just looked from Dean to Bobby and back again.

Dean scuffed to a stop, dust rising on the air around his feet. Bobby straightened up, his eyes squinting, his hands rubbing in some grubby cloth. "Dean?"

Dean nodded, shrugged. "Yeah."

He moved slow, away from the car, his eyes scanning around them. "Sam with you?"

Dean looked over his shoulder, down the long dirt road. "No."

There were questions in Bobby's eyes, Dean didn't know if he could answer them. "You…you were dead."

Dean nodded slow. He knew dead. He still felt it in the pit of his stomach sometimes, in the slow tearing of his skin, in the heated rush of blood over tormented flesh. "Hell."

This time Bobby nodded. "How? How did you…"

At least that he could answer. "Sam."

 

 

> Dean doesn't notice at first that Sam is gone. He sits on the bed in the motel room while his father fixes him up, bitching about Dean not listening and he could have gotten his brother killed and "Fuck Dean what is wrong with you?"
> 
> Bobby tells him to learn how to tell his brother no and mean it. Sam had been babbling about the damn movie since they saw the theater at dinner.
> 
> Dean tells his father and Bobby that it was his idea, that Sam had dropped it, because it's his fault, even if it wasn't his idea.. He takes the whooping without complaint.
> 
> It isn't until his father is asleep and Bobby's left for home and Dean is nursing his wounded pride that he realizes Sam isn't in the room. He figures the squirt is hiding in the car to keep out of Dad's line of sight. He'd let him stew on it a while before he went and told him that Dean had taken the blame, and the belt.
> 
> Sam would just owe him one.

 

 

_There are moments when all the pain and fear and anguish flush away. Moments when he's completely himself and he remembers._

_He remembers Sam's face as he died. He remembers holding his brother's lifeless body in his arms. He remembers burning the flesh of his father. He remembers the weight of Sam, the heat of his skin, the brilliant joy in his smile._

_It's only ever a moment. A brief respite that serves no purpose but to allow them to tear it away again…piece by piece, one memory at a time._

_He wonders how long it will be until he can't remember at all…until they have burned away the last of his humanity and made him like them._

 

 

Dean didn't believe what he was hearing, not even when Bobby's voice was joined by Ellen's. "No." He slapped his hand down on the table. "No."

He would know if Sam was evil. He would know.

"Dean, honey, I know it isn't what you want to hear." Ellen said, leaving her coffee on the table. "But that man isn't the brother you left behind. He did unspeakable things."

Dean pointed to his chest. "Me." Sam did those things to get to him. Dean was sure of it.

Ellen nodded, moving toward him. "I know. I know, Dean. He did all of those things to get to you, to get you out."

"Point is, he still did them." Bobby said, pushing a hand through hair that was thinner than Dean remembered it being. "He crossed a line, Dean."

_What's dead should stay dead._ Dean heard it in his own voice. Words he'd said to Sam. But they hadn't mattered when it was Sam that lay dead. Not to Dean. He'd done whatever he needed to bring his brother back. Sam had done the same.

"No. Sam. Brother." Dean thumped on his chest, his heart aching. Bobby had told him about people Sam killed. Not demons, not possessed. There were hunters, cops. Ellen told him of some battle, of demons choosing sides and Sam killing Lilith with little more than a desire and a smear of blood.

He left them. Couldn't listen. He walked alone down the empty, dusty driveway and out onto the main road. The Impala stopped, the door opened. Dean settled into the seat, but didn't really look at Sam. He wasn't ready to look.

Sam didn't say anything, just drove them south.

 

 

They ended up somewhere just north of Kansas on a long road of empty silence. Sam pulled the car off the road and got out, pacing around it while Dean watched.

Finally he came to the passenger side, wrenching the door open and squatting beside Dean. "You have to understand Dean."

Dean touched the side of his face and nodded. "For me."

Sam's tears were hot against his fingers. "Only for you. I would never…I'm not whatever Bobby said. I'm not evil. I'm just me. Just Sam."

"Sam." Dean wanted desperately to believe him. "Came for me."

Sam's arms wrapped around him, his face in Dean's lap as he sobbed. This was his brother. He would do anything for Sam. Always.

 

 

>   
>  Sam isn't in the car. He's not hiding by the soda machine. It's nearly two in the morning and Sam is just gone. Dean panics for a minute. But the damn monster is gone, put down by his father's shotgun and a load of iron buckshot.
> 
> Dean gets his jacket and heads out. Sam is on foot, so he couldn't have gone too far. He finds him a mile or so up the road, hunkered down in a bus stop, his knees drawn up to his chest and his jacket pulled down over them.
> 
> "Bus ain't coming, Sammy."
> 
> "It's Sam," he says reflexively, pulling one hand out of a pocket to push hair out of his eyes. "And it'll come in the morning."
> 
> Dean nods, leans against the shelter. "You plan on sitting here all that time?"
> 
> Sam doesn't answer, just looks the other way. Dean pushes off the shelter and sits on the bench beside his brother. "Running away?"
> 
> Sam's eyes roll and he turns his face again. "I got you hurt," he says after a long while. "Uncle Bobby thinks it's my fault."
> 
> "Bobby is just a pissy old man."
> 
> "Dad's really angry."
> 
> "Dad's asleep." Dean counters.
> 
> "You got hurt."
> 
> "I'm fine."
> 
> Sam shakes his head, shoving his hand back into his pockets. "I'm always fucking up."
> 
> "You're twelve, Sam." Dean's butt is achy and sore, but he can't bring himself to tell Sam that. "It's cold out here. Why don't you come back and get some sleep?"
> 
> "Dad hates me. I can't do anything right."
> 
> "Dad doesn't hate you." Dean pulled him close. "He might think you're a knucklehead sometimes, but he loves you. So do I."

 

 

 

He had been back almost six months before he saw for himself. The motel room was cold and silent when he woke, jumping out of a nightmare of demons and fingers on his skin, in his skin. Faces that had been human distorted by decades and centuries of pain and torment, mouths that whispered obscene pleasures in his ears and dripped acid onto his flesh.

"Sam?"

He was alone. For the first time he can remember since coming back. Dean peeled back the blankets and checked the bathroom, but Sam wasn't there. He pulls on jeans and shoves his feet into boots, pulling open the motel room door as he rubbed at sleepy eyes.

He could see Sam, across the parking lot near the office. He was talking to someone, their voices low. Dean headed toward them, feet scuffing on the gravel strewn pavement. The man turned as Dean got closer and Dean stopped.

His eyes were black as night.

Ruby. Dean remembered now. Ruby, with the black eyes. Told him he'd be one of them. Told him to hold on to Sam.

The man looked back at Sam, shook his hand, walked away.

"Hey." Sam said, all casual, like he hadn't just let a demon walk away.

Dean frowned, his eyes darting from Sam to the retreating back, his arm raised and pointing. "The hell?"

Sam licked his lips, pushing Dean's arm down. "Don't point. He'll get annoyed."

"Annoyed?" Dean pulled his hand away and headed back to the room. "The hell, Sam?"

"Dean, come on. We talked about this." Sam got the door shut and held his arms out. "Right? We talked about this."

Dean shook his head. Not this. Not exactly. "Bobby."

Sam's face was turning red. "No. No. Not like that."

"Yes. Demon." Dean pointed at the door. "Demon walked away." It was closer to a sentence than he'd managed before. He huffed and pulled his hands over his head.

"I had to, Dean." Sam said. "He's…someone I know."

 

 

_"Your baby brother told me to say hello."_

_Dean's stomach is open, his chest cracked in half. The air smells like blood and gore and sulfur. He grunts, groans, moans as the demon squatting over him pulls his hands through Dean's intestines._

_"You know he's up there playing tea party with us? Let's us play as long as we play nice."_

_There's no real body, just like there's no real blood. The pain is real though. Something sharp staggers down his thighs and blood burns over his skin. Black eyes blink down at him._

_"He's waiting for you to turn already. Wants you to come out and play. Figured maybe I could help you along._

 

 

There were other demons. Dean didn't always see them, but he could feel them. There were phone calls, and Sam would duck away, into the bathroom, out a door. Anywhere that Dean couldn't hear.

For a while it was okay. Dean reasoned that Sam had to make friends. Like Ruby. Not that Ruby was a friend, not really. Dean never really had figured out what her story was. It didn't matter though. Sam needed them to get to Dean, and now that he had Dean, he couldn't just drop them.

Maybe even owed them some.

That was something Dean could understand. As long as it didn't go too far.

He watched Sam and some woman argue, wondering if he'd even know that line. What was too far when you've been to hell? When you've spent months, lifetimes suffering for no greater sin than needing your brother alive?

Their wandering felt more aimless than before. No hunting. No real destination. Sam kept them moving though; Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Maryland.

Mostly, Dean stayed quiet. Stayed in the car. In the motel room. Until the town in Ohio.

He'd been in the real world for almost a year. It was cold. Dean felt them. Two of them. Horrific little monsters. They were wearing two teenage boys. Stalking a woman.

Dean got out of the car, rummaged in the trunk for a gun, holy water.

"Dean?"

Sam's hand was on his wrist. "What are you doing?"

Dean looked from Sam to the back of the nearest boy. "Hunt."

"That won't kill them."

Dean smiled and finished loading the gun with blessed rounds dipped in holy water. "Hurt though."

He closed the trunk and started after them. Sam cut him off. "Think about this. You're not ready."

"Demons, Sam. What we do." He stepped around his brother. Sam circled around him again, putting his hand on Dean's shoulder. "Girl about to get hurt."

Dean pushed Sam out of the way and followed the boy around the corner into an alley. The woman was against the wall at the end, screaming, whimpering. Dean knew the feeling. He knew the way his voice sounded when they cut into him.

He fired a shot, tagging the nearest one in the shoulder. He turned, cocking his head as Dean approached.

"Winchester." It slithered around the alley, the sound of his name. They forgot the girl, turning to Dean now. Dean emptied his gun. They kept coming. Until they stopped.

Just stopped.

Like they couldn't move. Dean felt Sam behind him, saw their eyes widen. Their feet lifted off the ground as Sam got closer. For a moment it looked like one of them was trying to reach Sam, then Sam's face got hard, his eyes going cold, his lips turning into a sneer. The two bodies trembled in mid-air, shaking until blood poured out of their noses and ears. When their eyes flooded with black, Sam growled and his hands pushed toward them.

Dean watched as they flew apart, slamming with a sick, wet sound against the walls of the alley. Black, inky smoke swirled up out of broken bodies and Sam blasted at it, fire flying through the air until the smoke fell in black ashes to the ground.

Sam walked away, leaving Dean and the woman. She stared at Dean. Dean turned and stared at his brother.

"What the hell?" Dean asked when he finally emerged from the alley to find Sam leaning against the Impala.

"Dean, don't."

Dean shook his head. "No, Sam. Tell me."

Sam looked at the ground, at his feet. He looked so young and vulnerable. "I didn't want you to know."

Dean's jaw tightened, but he stepped close, one hand on his brother's cheek. "Want to know." He had to know.

"I had to figure it out. You know?" Sam said, the toe of his boot scraping the sidewalk. "So I could find my way in."

"To me."

Sam nodded and glanced up at him. "Are you mad?"

Dean couldn't say he was mad. He was scared though. Scared that Bobby and Ellen were right and his brother had fallen into the black.

 

_She's less form than he remembers, only a vague image of the body she once inhabited. He's only been there a while…a few hours, a day…not enough time for it to be real._

_Her voice is familiar, sliding over him, through him. More intimate than anything before now. She cradles his head, the impression of her hair on his face making him blink. "Sam." She whispers his brother's name._

_He nods. The pins in his wrists pull his arms out and away. "He's fighting. Just like I hoped. He's going to make it. Hold on to that. Hold on to Sam."_

_He isn't sure exactly what she means, but Sam is fighting. He remembers telling him to keep fighting. Keep fighting._

_The heat sears his skin now that she's gone, blisters breaking open, blood spilling over ruptured flesh. He screams, his voice rolling away into the vast abyss of dark and darker. "Sam!"_

_He holds on to it, as the pain grows, as the voices murmur, rising and falling, as hands beat against him. He whispers it in the quiet when they leave him alone. There's a face that goes with the word…messy brown hair and worried green eyes and nervous smile._

_"Sam."_

 

>   
>  "Do you think I'm evil?" Sam asks as they trudge back toward the hotel.
> 
> "What?" Dean scowls at his brother, wondering where this is coming from.
> 
> "I heard Dad and Uncle Bobby talking." Sam says, ducking into the collar of his coat.
> 
> "About you being evil?" Dean can't fathom that. If anything Sammy was the moral one in this family.
> 
> "About the demon wanting me. That it killed Mom to get to me." Sam is chewing on his lip as he stops, looks up at Dean. "If it wants me, does it mean I'm evil?"
> 
> Dean claps a hand to his brother's shoulder and pulls him in close. "No Sam. I don't think you're evil. I don't think you have an evil bone in your body." 

 

 

Sam was different after that. He tried too hard. He found them hunts. Small things. A ghost in Tupelo, a poltergeist in Buffalo, a black dog outside Seattle. Sam worked hard at making Dean comfortable, at making everything like it used to be, but Dean could see that it wasn't.

There were still the phone calls and the strange people. There were demons that came, questioning Sam about the two he'd killed. Sam did his best to hide it from him, but Dean knew.

He was coming back from getting coffee early one morning when he heard Sam arguing with someone in the alley behind the motel. Dean rounded the corner and stopped. She was familiar somehow, her eyes flooded black as Sam yelled at her.

"They broke the rules, not me." Sam shook his head, pacing away.

"Demons, remember?"

"Judy, this only works if you keep your promise."

"I could say the same for you, honey." Her voice was honey sweet, twangy with southern style. For some reason she reminded Dean of a truck stop waitress he'd known when he was sixteen.

"I can't keep this up." Sam pulled a hand through his hair.

"No, sugar, you can't. There's a whole world of hurt looking for you. Waiting for you to step up or bow out." She touched his face almost gently. "I figured I'd give you warning. I owed you that much."

"Right. Thanks."

"Take care of yourself, Sugar."

She walked right past Dean, smile and a wink and a sass in her walk that made Dean turn his head, watching her hips swing. In the alley, Sam still paced, his face a little pale, his hands in constant motion like he didn't really know what to do with them.

Dean left him to pacing and went back to the room, setting the coffees down on the bedside table. He'd never asked Sam how. Always assumed Sam would find a way. Some way.

He paced the length of the room. Door to bathroom and back. More than a year he'd been out. More than a year he'd followed Sam blindly, despite what Bobby told him. Despite what he'd seen. Passing the mirror over the dresser, Dean stopped, caught by the sight. His skin was white, his hair longer than it had been since he was a boy. His clothes hung off him.

It was almost like he wasn't really there. He leaned in closer. It always startled him when there were no scars. No marks from the torment. There should be signs, reminders. Not that he needed them. He remembered each and every moment. Every drop of blood.

The lights flickered in the room and a fleeting image ghosted across the mirror. A memory, an accusation. His father's eyes, his father's voice. Dean had promised him. If Sam had gone evil, especially if he had done it to save him, Dean had failed.

The door opened and the feeling passed. Dean swallowed and turned to Sam. "We should get moving." Dean said when he could speak. "Maybe catch that haunting in Salmon you mentioned."

They were in the car and half way out of town before Sam said anything. "Dean…do you think…" He swallowed and shook his head. "I don't want to be someone you hate."

"Never hate you Sam." Dean responded. They both stared out at the road. The naked truth sat on the seat between them, ignored, overlooked.

 

>   
>  Dean had seen the envelope. He'd read the letter. _Congratulations_. Sam's ticket out of everything he said he hated. Dean never really expected him to take it. But when a long stake out ended in a lot of blood and a trip to the ER, he wasn't surprised to come out the next morning to find Sam was gone. Just a note left to say his good byes.
> 
> He was done. Didn't want to be the reason Dean got hurt. Didn't want to be the one John blamed. Was tired of constantly wondering if one day they'd all go out to hunt and never come back again. Or if he would be at fault for it when it happened. _Just, please don't hate me._
> 
> Dean folds the note neatly and stows it in his bag. "Never hate you Sam." He whispers it into his coffee as his father pretends everything is fine.

 

_He doesn't really believe it, not the first five hundred times. It feels as real as everything else. Sam's hand on his shoulder. Sam's voice in his ear. "Hey, Dean."_

_Just like that. Like it's normal for Sam to be there, to be touching him, to be speaking to him._

_He doesn't really believe it, but he lifts his head from the protection of his arms, unfolds himself, eyes blinking in the half light of whatever netherworld he's in today, and Sam's there, squatting beside him, his face all soft and familiar. "Hey, Dean."_

_The warm affection in the little words, like home. He feels it in his bones, even though the bones aren't real and Sam's not real. He's not even sure that he is real._

_"Knew you'd come." Words that rattle in his head, rasp out his vocal chords and hang in the air._

_"Yeah, it’s me, it’s me. It’s Sammy. I’m here." His skin is soft, his eyes sharp green._

_He's almost ready to believe, his hand reaching for Sam's when those eyes flood black and that mouth falls open in laughter. Sam is gone and he's left holding empty air while the gathered watchers howl in glee at his pain._

_"No one is coming for you."_

_He curls back into himself, hiding from the words, from the truth, from the image of Sam with ink in his eyes._

 

 

The next time Dean saw Bobby, it was closing on two years since his return, and Dean had called him without Sam knowing, asked him to meet up.

Sam was asleep when Dean slipped out of the room. Sam would never let Dean go if he knew. Dean paused at the doors of the church. He'd never had much use of them beyond stocking up on holy water, but this was different. He was different.

He'd seen Hell.

Bobby was in the shadows, Dean stepped into the sanctuary, his arms out, making sure he was visible. He wanted it clear that he posed no threat.

It was closing in on midnight and the church was empty but for them. When Bobby was sure Dean was alone, he stepped clear of the shadows near the confessional. "Dean."

He nodded and sank to a seat in a pew in the middle of the church. "Thanks for coming."

"You gonna tell me why I'm here?"

Dean looked at his hands where they lay against his thighs. He felt like he was waking up from a long nightmare. "I need to know."

"We already told you, Son." Bobby sank to a seat on the pew in front of Dean, his hand on the back. That hand was marked with scars Dean didn't remember. He blinked and looked up.

Bobby's face was marked too, a long thick scar running from under his left eye down to his jaw. "Courtesy of some demon in Baltimore."

He'd heard something about Baltimore. Sam did his best to keep Dean out of things, away from news, away from hunters and demons alike. They hunted when Dean insisted, ghosts and vampires, but never anything more. Still, Dean managed to get some information. "Lilith's crew."

Bobby nodded. "Sam should have killed them all when he took her out." He inhaled and shook his head. "Instead he let them go and left the mess for us to clean up."

Dean inhaled and let it out slowly. He'd seen things. Heard things. Sam was different. "He's not…he just isn't."

Bobby looked away. "Tell that to the ones he killed, Dean. Tell that to the ones he gave to be possessed."

"There were demons. Sam killed." He could see it clear as day in his mind. The alley, the two teenage boys, Sam. "Never touched them."

"He's changed." Bobby agreed. "So why am I here?"

"He's trying."

"Maybe trying isn't enough. Maybe your father was right."

Dean closed his eyes and sat back, the hard wood of the pew digging into his knees, into his back. It grounded him. "He's my brother."

"Your daddy was wrong to lay it on you Dean. It doesn't have to be you."

"No." He wasn’t ready to hear that. "He's my brother." He said it again, as if it were enough to make a difference. "He hasn't done anything since…" But sins of omission were just as deadly as the other kind. Dean knew that. Sam hadn't killed innocent people since he'd brought Dean out of hell, but he'd let demons walk away when apparently he had the power to kill them.

"We need you, Son." Bobby's scarred hand closed on Dean's, squeezing tight. "We're a dying breed. Hunters are dying everywhere. Ellen's closed down and gone into hiding. Jo's dead. More demons out there than we can handle."

Hiding didn't sound half bad some days. Maybe that's all he and Sam were doing anyway. "I have to go." He pulled away. Half way to the door, Bobby's voice stopped him.

"He pulled you out of Hell Dean, ask him how he got in."

Dean didn't look back.

"Where were you?" Sam demanded, his voice icy and dark when Dean finally got back to the room. It was nearly two in the morning, the room cold. Dean shut the door, but didn't turn on the light.

"Out."

"Out?" Sam's voice sounded like their father's. Guilt stabbed through him.

He should just tell Sam the truth. He'd find out anyway. He always did. "Bobby."

Sam scrambled out of bed and stalked toward him. "Bobby? You went to see Bobby?"

Dean nodded and finished emptying his pockets onto the table before he turned to face Sam. He was close, inches from Dean, glaring down at him. "I had to know."

Sam's face flickered through a number of expressions before his lip turned up in a sneer. "Know? What, that I'm the goddamn fucking antichrist?"

"How." Really, that was it. What Dean really needed to know. How Sam did it.

"How what?"

"How did you do it?"

Sam blinked, backing off a half step. "Do it?"

"Get into hell. Get me out. How?"

"It doesn't matter."

"It does." Dean was pretty sure it mattered.

"I don't want to tell you." Sam moved away, back toward the bed. He climbed up on it, his back to the headboard, his knees drawn up to his chest.

"I need to know." Dean said it softly, moving to sit on the end of the bed.

"She said I had to really mean it." Sam said after a long silence. "That was the part I couldn't understand. I meant it. I really, really meant it. Anything for you Dean."

Anything. It was the same anything that had led Dean to trade his life for Sam's. One year on earth and an eternity in hell, just to bring Sam back from the dead. It was the same anything that made his father give up his life and the Colt to do the same for Dean. Anything.

"What did you have to do, Sammy?" He hadn't called his brother that in so long, it felt all wrong rolling off his tongue. Sam's eyes lift, teary and hurt. Like Dean's questions were stabbing him in the gut.

"I wanted to help Dean. That's all it ever was." Sam unfolded himself, stretching his legs out until his feet are next to Dean on the bed. "I figured it out. Took a long time. Too long. I kept dreaming about you. Watched them hurt you. Watched you scream."

Dean wanted to move, to walk or something. Anything to keep the feeling of those claws raking over his skin at bay. He stood, crossing his arms, then sliding them down his sides. "I trapped them, asked them about you."

"Demons." Dean knew without seeing Sam's miserable nod.

"Sometimes I killed them after. But after a while…Judy was the first. I let her go. She didn't hurt anyone."

Dean flinched as the memory of them bubbled up. Demons, inky black consciousness that surrounded him, burned through him, filled him up and emptied him out. "They always hurt someone. They're demons." He said it softly, but Sam reacted like Dean had kicked him.

"She was just trying to live her life." Sam got up, his hands pulling through his hair.

Demons don't get a life. They take lives, starting with the bodies they fill up when they get out. They torment and torture. They lie and steal. They fuck with your head and fuck you over until you don't know which way is up, can't tell what is real and what is just an illusion. They come to you all dressed up like your baby brother come to save you, then dissolve away just when you give in to believing.

"Sam." Dean wasn't sure what he meant with the word, with the tone his voice took on, but Sam is suddenly there, inches from him, crowding Dean up against the wall.

"Do you think I wanted it? Do you think I wanted to kill them? They wanted to stop me Dean. Even Bobby wanted me to stop, wanted me to leave you there."

Dean put his hands on Sam's chest, half holding his brother away, half just to be sure he was real. He wanted to whisper the word that would tell him, that would show him once and for all, but he can't make his tongue move. Sam's eyes were stormy and dark, but still green, still beautiful. Still Sam.

"He wanted me to keep killing demons, Dean. Knowing that you could be one of them."

"He said you killed hunters."

Sam's eyes flared and Dean felt an odd pressure in his chest. Sam was angry. Dean could feel his anger like it was a physical thing, shoved into his stomach and lifting him off his feet. Dean couldn't breathe right, his hands grabbed at Sam, his fingers scrambling over his chest. "Sam."

He had a moment of real fear, gasping around the invisible fist holding his insides hostage. Sam's face had gone back to the sneer, hard, vicious. This was the face of a man who could kill. Maybe he'd regret it once it was done…then again, maybe not.

"Christo." It was a whisper, hissed out with the last of his air.

Sam's eyes didn't flood with dark. He blinked, looking at Dean as if just realizing what he was doing. He stepped back and Dean slid down the wall, suddenly free, air trickling back into his lungs. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing, almost like those first days after coming out of hell.

The room was silent when he finally found the strength to lift his head. Empty.

Sam was gone. Again.

 

 

_It isn't really like riding a bike. More like falling off one. It's awkward and uncomfortable. It hurts._

_The gun feels wrong in his hands. The knife is slight and doesn't feel real._

_It's been twenty five months since Sam brought him out of hell, a little more than one since Sam left him again. Ruby's knife still slices through flesh and demon alike, which is a relief because he can't bring himself to do an exorcism, not knowing the bastard will just go back to tormenting whatever lost soul is trapped down there with no little brother coming to pull them out._

_He doesn't go back to Bobby. He just goes back to hunting. Hard. He tracks down Judy and takes her first. Follows a trail through places Sam had been. Cleans house._

_There's a furor in the news he knows has to do with him, but he's careful. Cautious. Leaves nothing behind but the body._

_It's awkward and uncomfortable. It hurts. But at least he knows it's real._

 

> Dean always finds him, when he runs. Sometimes it just takes a while. This time he'd known where to look, he just wasn't sure what he'd say.
> 
> So he doesn't say anything. He sits in the back of this cheap coffee shop watching Sam and some blond talk about some moral experiment he thinks he read about once when he was bored.
> 
> She’s laughing, shaking her head. “What, you think _you_ would have done it differently?”
> 
> “Well, yeah. Wouldn’t _you_?” Sam is so earnest, so thoughtful and it makes Dean ache in his stomach.
> 
> She smacks her hand down and laughs, a beautiful sound that still makes him feel like he's a filthy voyeur. “That’s exactly it, though,” she exclaims. “I have no idea what I’d have done. They were all perfectly normal college students, same as us. Exactly the same as us. Maybe they were sat here eating their lunch, thirty whatever years ago. All I’m saying is- I seriously don’t think any of them entered the experiment thinking ‘Abu Ghraib, here I come!’”
> 
> Sam shakes his head, tossing the lid to his girly coffee on the table and stirring it while he watches her pick at her muffin. He's careful when he speaks to her, Dean can see it, wonders if she can. “But then a, what- a third of them? Just threw themselves to that point, in less than a week. There’s internalizing the role, and then there’s just plain sadism.”
> 
> “Give a dog a bad name and hang him,” she shrugs, her eyes wander past Dean's face and he thinks maybe she notices he's watching. He looks away. “Becoming what they thought a prison guard should be, the perpetuated stereotype. Self-fulfilling prophecies. It’s legitimizing the ideology, isn’t it. The power of authority.”
> 
> “Which is basically the Nuremberg Defense.”
> 
> “All right, all right-- it’s not an excuse, just an explanation. Mr. Morally Superior,” Heads turn to look at them as she barks a laugh and she smiles and waves before going back to picking the raisins out of her muffin. “And I suppose you’ve never done something you didn’t necessarily agree with, just ‘cause your- your dad or a teacher told you to, either.”
> 
> “I don’t do things I don’t agree with.”
> 
> Dean knows he means it, because he's been down that road. Arguments with their father over the right and wrong of things, about the morality of killing things that used to be human, about the choices they made. Sam doesn't ever do anything he doesn't agree with.

 

 

Bobby wasn't lying about the abundance of demons. Dean found them anywhere and everywhere. He cut through them. Sometimes they cut back.

Five years out. Dean hadn't seen Sam since the day he left him. It was the longest time Sam had ever been gone. He still felt the ache of it in his side every morning when he woke up alone. Problem was he wasn't sure if it was the ache of missing his brother, or the ache at what he knew Sam had become or the ache of knowing it was his own fault.

He ran into other hunters sometimes. They always looked at him with that _look_. The one that told him his days were numbered. That he was little more to them than the demons they hunted.

He made his way to Hell himself, and had no business coming back out. At least that's how he read them.

They don't get in his way though once they realize Sam isn't with him and that he's hunting again. Really hunting. And this time he has the scars to prove it. There's the long thin one down his left side, and the gunshot near his belly button. Three gash marks on his back from a claw some son of a bitch latched onto him with before he got the knife up under its ribcage.

They feel good. Right. The way it should be. They way it always should have been. Maybe he still didn't exactly feel like he was alive, but maybe like he wasn’t living a lie.

Dean was in Canton, Ohio, nursing a hangover with a chili dog and a beer when he saw Sam. Just watching him. Dean stared. Sam stared.

By the time Dean decided to do something about it, Sam was gone. Dean didn't go looking for him. He wasn't sure what he would say. Sorry seemed so small and even if Dean understood him better after five years of fighting a war none of them would win, he knew things would never be the same again.

 

 

The dreams came back sometimes. Dean would wake in a sweat, his heart racing. In the early days Sam was always there to make them fade away, his touch a solid thing tying Dean to the here and now.

They chased him out of the dark and into the not-quite-light of early morning. His skin was wet with sweat that feels like it should be blood. Dean stumbled to the bathroom and into the shower, standing dumbly under the spray, letting the water wash it away, wishing it could do the same for his dreams.

His phone rang as he climbed out of the shower, and he cursed as he banged his knee against the toilet as he tried to get to it. His hand fell on the phone just as it stopped ringing. He didn't know the number, but that didn't ever matter. He was just drying off when the phone beeped to tell him he had voicemail.

He pressed the button and held the phone to his ear while he dried his ass with the other hand. "Hey, Dean. Miss you."

He pulled the phone away, staring at it as if it would make Sam appear in the room. He replayed the message and tried to call the number back. It dumped to voice mail, some guy name Bart Savage. Dean stared at the phone until his head started to hurt and his stomach reminded him he hadn't eaten yet.

 

 

> “Well, okay,” the blond says. “What if it were less, you know, less black and white, not just a roleplay scenario?" She's shredding a napkin, her hands gesturing vaguely and letting little pieces of white float down to the table. "Like, what if you were a real prison guard? High security. Rapists and Nazis and--and Satanist psychos. The nastiest stuff you can think of. Would that keep you on your moral high ground?”
> 
> “It’s not up to me to-- to take their punishment into my own hands." Sam sits back in his chair, his legs skewed wide to the side. "To judge them, or whatever you want to call it. That’s not my job.”
> 
> She cocks her head at him, her blue eyes concentrating on him. “I thought you weren’t religious?”
> 
> “I’m not, really- just.” Sam shrugs, waves a hand. Dean can't see his face, but he can imagine it. “How would that work? Oh, that guy killed five little girls, so I’ll make him get on all fours and bark like a dog. This guy only killed one little girl, but he raped her too, so I’ll piss on him. What do I do to the guy who raped five little girls, but left them all alive?”
> 
> Her face clouds up as she thinks through it, then she sighs. “Only you would object to the practicalities of prison guard sadism.”
> 
> “What can I say? I'm a catch.” Sam laughs then, his head tilted back and Dean leans away, behind a man with a newspaper so that Sam can't see him. He's not ready for Sam to know he's there, that Dean came for him. Again.
> 
> “Yeah.” She leans across the table, her smile bright as her arms knock muffin crumbs everywhere. She taps him on the nose, intimate, familiar. Her fingers linger. “I think you might be.”
> 
> But Dean has seen enough. His brother doesn't need his big brother to come to his rescue. Not anymore. This is no bus stop in the middle of the night. Sam's no squeaky voiced teenager. Who was he to tell Sam where he belonged?

 

_Rumor is that Sam Winchester is a wanted man. Demons hunt him. Hunters hunt him._

_But Sam Winchester won't go to ground for just anyone._

_They lay traps, but he evades them. They corner him and he escapes. He's wily, they say. Wicked and wily. Both sides want him dead because Sam Winchester doesn't choose sides. Not anymore._

 

 

Ellen died in Omaha. Dean heard about it a few days later. Gutted and left spread out around her bar as a sign for other hunters. There were those who blamed Sam, but Dean knew better.

He knew Sam's style better than anyone. And Sam might be pretty far gone around the bend, but even he wouldn't have done this. Bobby was waiting for him when he got there, Bobby and four other hunters Dean never met.

Dean walked past them, into the bar. The body was gone, but the blood was still there, staining the oak bar and the floor.

"Time is up, Son."

Bobby filled the doorway, his back up spread around him. Dean nodded, gun already in hand. "Figured you'd say that. This wasn't Sam."

"Makes no difference." Bobby said, easing his shotgun back onto his shoulder. "Sam had his chances."

Dean has seen him a half dozen times. Each time he looked less and less like the brother Dean watched in that coffee shop in Palo Alto with the pretty girl and her muffin. He wondered if Sam even remembered the conversation.

Sam had told Dean that to get into hell he had to really mean it. He never told Dean what it took to get back out again.

 

 

_Hell leaves no scars. Not physically, at least._

_The blood slicks over his skin, over his back. The wounds are gone. Only the blood remains. He's curled up tight, his limbs and head tucked in on himself. He takes tiny breaths of fetid air and holds himself still against the next torment, the next illusion. The next…_

_“Leave us alone.”_

_The voice is familiar, but he doesn't move. Can't. Isn't real. Isn't real._

_“For at least-- five hours. I mean it. Anyone bothers us before then, we’re leaving."_

_He can't understand the words. They don't mean anything. He shivers in the silence that follows them, huddling deeper into himself. He's meant to be holding on to something. He just can't remember what._

_“Go. Now.”_

_There's a scurrying sound, an expectant whisper of claws and scraping and breath being held. There's a hand. A big, familiar hand. It cups to the back of his neck._

_It's cold, he suddenly realizes, as if all the fires of hell have been put out and the only flame left is in that skin against his. He almost dares hope._

_“Hey,” Sam whispers. “Hey.”_

_His fingers twitch and curl around the small bones under them. He drags in a lungful of the sulfur ridden air, sure this was yet another illusion, even as he turns his head towards the sound of his brother’s voice. Sam slides a hand across his cheek, the other slipping under his shoulders. He can't fight, can't pretend it's real as he rolls to his back, then Sam is lifting him, sitting him up. His head lolls sideways onto his shoulder, toward Sam and the smell is real…more real than it's ever been. It's the smell of stale beer and pizza and Sam._

_“Hey,” Sam says again. “Dean.”_

_Sam. Hold on to Sam. His fingers clutch at nothing and he tries. Really tries. He can't look though. Looking always ends the illusion. Sam's eyes go black and the laughter tears through him, leaving him broken and empty._

_“Knew you’d come,” Dean breathes, just like he always does when it comes time for them to take it away again. His voice is dry and cracked from screaming, endless screaming._

_It takes him two attempts to raise his hand, pulling it sluggishly up over his hip, over the chest pressed next to his. He keeps his eyes closed, but he catches the hand moving toward his, grabbing a wrist and holding on tight._

_“Yeah. It’s me, it’s me. It’s Sammy. I’m here.”_

_There's a forehead against his and it feels real. He's sure it's another trick. Kisses pressed to his head, into his grimy, blood-matted hair. That hand moves over his skin, swiping away the blood, pressing with tiny shaking motions to the raw flesh underneath._

_“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m here now.”_

_He doesn't open his eyes, just holds on to the illusion._

 

 

Bobby died in his own home. Alone. No one knew how the demons got in, but when they were done there wasn't much left.

The hunters had given up hunting Sam. Sometimes to get the prey you want you have to go after something else entirely.

So they hunted Dean instead.

Dean went to the funeral anyway. Knowing they would be there. Knowing they would try to hold him. Use him as bait to trap Sam.

Dean wasn't much good at keeping promises when it came to Sam. And he sure as hell wasn't going to let anyone else keep them for him.

The least he could do was pay his respects to the man who was as much a father as John Winchester had ever been. He owed Bobby that much.

There wasn't much turn out. Most hunters were gone. Most demons with them. The balance is almost restored. Fewer of both when the whole thing was over.

That suits Dean just fine.

 

 

_He feels old, worn out and stretched like a pair of faded jeans that haven't fit in years. The scars of fourteen months in hell live under his skin, where no one can see them, but he feels them just the same. They go well with the ones that live **in** his skin, the ones from the fifteen years since hell._

_The book lies heavy in his hands, heavy and useless, filled with old stories. Some of them true, some of them everyone thinks are true._

_Like the whole thing about angels falling and demons in the herd of swine. There was a time he might have found it funny. Now it only makes him sad._

_He sets it down on the pew, his hands smoothing over the cover. The church is silent. Empty. The intricately carved Jesus stares down at him, accusing him. He isn't safe here. It is only an illusion._

_It's almost over now._

 

 

When Sam came to him, there was no sonic boom, no flash of light, no smell of sulfur. The doors opened, the scent of the night slipping in and gliding up the aisle under the scent of melting wax and incense.

They stood, Dean near the altar, Sam near the font of holy water. Their movements, when they came, were slow, as if neither of them were sure the other was really there.

There was blood on his hands, Dean knew. He'd washed them any number of times but washing them wasn't making them clean. Maybe he never had been clean since he'd held Sam's dying body in his arms and begged him not to leave him again.

If he breathed deep he would smell the fires. They reminded him of Hell. But those doors are closed, just like the ones to the church.

Sam's smile was tentative, his hand held out to Dean hesitant and shaking. Dean understood what it meant now, to really mean it. Understood that to get out of hell, Sam only had to hold on to something. Just like Dean had held on to him.

Dean closed the distance between them, forgoing the outstretched hand to pull Sam to him, body to body, a hard embrace that left him breathless. Dean's fingers fisted in his brother's jacket, holding him there.

Sam's lips smooth over the wrinkled forehead. His hands reach around to pull Dean close, closer, until all Dean can breathe is Sam.

"What now?" Sam asked, his voice a little raw and ragged, like he hasn't used it in a while.

Dean doesn't have an answer for that. It didn't matter what came after this. This was everything.


End file.
